


It's Getting Better All the Time

by Flyting



Series: Hot Teacher / Single Dad AU [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo is a Mess, Bisexuality, Child Neglect, F/M, Gen, Hot Dad Ben Solo, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Kidfic, M/M, Rey is Ben's kid because Reasons, Teacher Armitage Hux, raging dumpster fire of a human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: “Where is your daughter?”“I don’t... what?” he repeats. He rolls over so that his head is sandwiched between the phone and a pillow. “What do you mean where is she?”He stops the words 'how am I supposed to know' before they can come out of his mouth, but just barely. Leia hears them anyway.A slice of Ben's life before he met Hux.Or, How Ben came to be living as a single father in Single Dad/Hot Teacher AU.





	It's Getting Better All the Time

**Author's Note:**

> First thing I've written in ages. Been struggling with a combo of writer's block/lack of time/crippling fear of inadequacy. The usual. 
> 
> So Hux doesn't actually appear in this one. Enjoy some sexy, sexy backstory on how Hot Single Dad Ben came to be a Hot Single Dad.

He was so hungover his head was vibrating.

“Fuck,” Ben groans, turns over, and pulls the comforter up over his face. The body next to him shifts in response, kicking him absently in the shin. Oh god, he feels like death. Like he’s been mummified – dried out and wrapped in cotton, his brain yanked out through his nose and his liver stuffed in a jar. But instead of stuffing they’d filled his skull with bees.  
  
_Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz…_

After a minute the sound stops.

He turns over again, burying his face in the pillow so the sun will stop trying to stab him in the brain through his closed eyelids, and is halfway back to blissful unconsciousness when the vibration starts up again.

“Nnghh,” he says, eloquently. His stomach lurches, which makes the bees vibrate louder in response.

“Oh my god, answer your fucking phone,” a woman’s voice, rough with sleep, says from the other side of the bed.

Recognition wanders in slow and ambling, like a drunk for last call. He groans again, louder, but for an entirely different reason this time.

Talia.

 _Jesus fucking fuck_ , he was going to cut his fucking dick off, not _again_. What the fuck was wrong with him?

He fumbles in the blankets for the phone with one hand, mentally cursing. Who the fuck was calling him at a quarter to noon?

It takes another three or four rings before he realizes the phone is on the floor next to the mattress instead of actually in the bed, and then another two before he can get his brain and eyes on the same page enough to actually read the fucking screen. 

 _Mom,_ it says, next to his favorite picture of Leia- the one where she looks like she was trying hard not to laugh and failing. Underneath that it says _3 Missed Calls._

Shit.

“Yeah?” he rasps, after enough brain cells rub together for him to swipe _Accept Call._

_“Where’s your daughter?”_

Ben’s not prepared for the sharp tone of pure motherly fury right in his ear. He yanks the phone away on instinct. “ _What_?”

Next to him, Talia rolls out of bed and stretches. He gets a glimpse of the ivy tattoo crawling from her tailbone to her shoulder, twin to the one he had on his back. His stupid traitor dick gives a stir of interest when she bends over to look for her clothes in the detritus next to the bed.

“ _Where is your daughter?”_ Each word is driven directly into his skull.

“I don’t... what?” he repeats. He rolls over, facing safely away from Talia, so that his head is sandwiched between the phone and a pillow. “What do you mean where is she?”

He stops the words _how am I supposed to know_ before they can come out of his mouth, but just barely. Leia hears them anyway.

On paper, he was supposed to have Rey on Thanksgiving and every other weekend, but… that was on paper. Somehow that had just never seemed to work out. Not that he didn’t _want_ to see her- He did, of course he did. He still had all the pictures and little kid scribbles they’d sent him in prison. It was just… difficult. Either he was sleeping on somebody’s couch and didn’t have anywhere for Rey to stay, or else they had moved to the other side of the state with her mom’s Asshole Boyfriend of the Week, or neither of them had a car…

“When was the last time you saw her?” Leia demands, interrupting the familiar litany of excuses playing through his head.

“I…” He struggles to remember, which says enough.

 “Her school just called me. She’s been truant for three weeks.” She thrusts each sentence at him like an accusation.

“Did you call Ashley?”

“Of course I did, she hasn’t called me back. The school hasn’t been able to get in touch with her either, that’s why they called me- I had her put me down as a contact just in case.”

“Oh.” It belatedly occurs to Ben that he probably should have done that too. Come to think of it, he’s not even really sure what school Rey goes to… Jesus. He rubs his face with his free hand.

There’s a blare of a car horn in the background of the call. She’s driving. “Are you home?” Leia says, terse.

“Yeah, I’m-“

“Good,” she interrupts. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes if these bastards will get out of my way. They’ve been living down in Roslindale, we can be there in a few hours.”

“Uh, okay yeah,” Ben agrees, distant. He’s grateful, briefly, for her ability to just take charge of a situation, because he’s lost. “See you in a bit.”

He thumbs the _End Call_ button and immediately shoots his ex, Rey’s mother, a text.

 _-Where the fuck are you???  
_ _-Call me_

After a minute the little green _read_ pops up.

No response. He fights the urge to grind his teeth. He hasn’t even fucking _gotten out of bed yet._

_\- Stop fucking ignoring me, it’s an emergency_

_Read._

Another minute goes by. Then another. Then another. Nothing. _Bitch._

Ben slams his phone down, and has just enough self-control to do it on the mattress instead of on the wood floor next to his bed. He can’t afford to replace it. _Fucking fucking fuck_ -

He showers on autopilot, using the squeeze bottle of neon orange dish soap that’s been living in his shower for the last month in lieu of actual soap and drying off with the first thing he can grab off the bathroom floor.

He’s tugging a shirt on over his head as he walks out into the kitchen and realizes that Talia hasn’t left yet. She’s on the phone, presumably with Derren, the mousy bank teller she’d moved in with five months ago, citing Ben’s status as a ‘raging dumpster fire of a human being’ as an ‘irreconcilable difference.’  

Ben owns exactly three cups and all three of them are dirty, so he chugs slightly expired orange juice out of the carton while he listens to her spin bullshit into gold.

“Hey baby,” she says, all syrupy warmth that he recognizes all too well. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry I didn’t call you.” She rummages around in a drawer for a minute before pulling out a shot glass and holding it up to him wordlessly. Ben tips a little bit of juice into it.

“No… Me and Keisha went out after work. I ended up just staying and passing out on her couch. We were both so fucking hammered.” She laughs easily. Ben hates himself for finding it charming. “I know, right?”

They had met because Talia was a bartender at the club where he usually worked the door. Watching her smile and lie with perfect charm, it was easy to see how she wrapped customers around her finger. He never had the patience for that customer service bullshit.

After the bar closed last night she’d given him a ride. Once they got back to his place, he’d returned the favor.

It hadn’t been the first time since they’d broken up. 

Probably wouldn’t be the last either, knowing his complete and utter lack of self-respect.

“That’s called lying,” Ben says, wry, after she hangs up.

“It’s called _shut the fuck up_ ,” she counters, sweetly. She shoots her orange juice and holds out the empty shot glass for a refill. “So who was blowing up your phone earlier?”

“My mom,” Ben groans. “Something’s going on with Rey, she’s missing school, so mom’s dragging me out to Roslindale for- I don’t know, backup- while she yells at my ex.”

“Oh that’s right… I forgot you had a kid. She’s what, five?”

“Eight.”

She doesn’t mean it like an insult, he knows she doesn’t, but it sends a sharp flare of guilt through his gut just the same. He kills the last of the orange juice and tosses the empty carton on top of the trash.

It was about to overflow, he notices. Metaphor for his fucking life.

Talia slinks out like a stray cat just before Leia arrives, smacking his ass on her way out the door. “Bye, see you at work! Let me know how things go with your ex!”

Ben stares at the closed door for a solid minute after she leaves. Castration. That would solve so many of his problems, really.  

That means that his only options for conversation on two-hour drive to Roslindale are work, politics, or his long – and apparently still growing- list of failings both as a son and a father.

After sitting in awkward silence with his knees jammed up halfway to his chest in the seat of Leia’s tiny sedan, Ben bites the bullet and chooses the least painful option.

“So… who are you voting for?” Ben asks slowly.

The wrinkle at the corner of her mouth tells him that she doesn’t think he’s funny.

“Ben-“  
  
“I know, okay? Whatever you’re going to say, whatever personality flaw of mine you want to point out today, just take it as a fact that _I know_.”  
  
“Do you?” She huffs, a wry sound. “I hope to god not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He’s starting to feel sick. The car ride on an empty stomach isn’t doing anything for his hangover.

“The only thing worse than ignorance is choosing to be a deliberate, self-centered ass.”

And Ben doesn’t have anything to say to that. Nothing useful, anyway.

He glances at the console clock. They had only been in the car for _28 fucking minutes._

Angry responses crowd around his brain, threatening to eclipse rational thought. _Wow, you nearly made it a half hour without criticizing me. That’s got to be a fucking record._ He grits his teeth and stares out the window as telephone poles flick by. The last thing he needs is a shouting match with his mom while she’s going 90 down the freeway. And it will be a shouting match, it always is, both of them are too stubborn to back down once they’ve gotten going. Who the fuck did she think he got his temper from?

He rolls the window down, half because he knows it pisses Leia off and half to feel the cold slap of air across his face. He’s not going to start today, he’s not. He doesn’t care. Let her say whatever the fuck she wants to say. Dragging him was practically the family pastime anyway. Get this stupid errand over with, and go home. He’s not going to do this family drama bullshit today. He cracks the knuckles on his right hand, idly, and focuses on his breathing. 

Talia had kissed him before she left, with that filthy tongue that he loved. He could probably convince her to come over again tonight, if he whined. Fuck self-respect, he was going to need to unwind by the end of this shitty day, and she had always been so good at loosening him up.

He fishes his phone out of his pocket and shoots off a quick text.  
  
_-You busy tonight?_

She responds within a few minutes.

 _-You gonna need another ride home?_  
  
_\- Maybe ; )_

He puts the phone away before Talia responds because staring at the screen in the car is making his stomach churn, and focuses on the landscape outside. The only other words Ben and his mother exchange on the two-hour drive is when she asks him to hand her the bag in the backseat, so she can rummage around for her phone to look up the directions.

“I’ll do it,” he grits out. He’s still pissed, but it’s burned out into a hollow emptiness.

He pulls up the directions on Maps and guides them off the highway, not speaking except to tell Leia when to turn.

The suburbs spread out and shrink, getting thinner and thinner, until they’re passing open fields. The road they’re on has transitioned slowly from asphalt to gravel, and finally to dirt when they pull up to a gate and a faded tin sign that says _Jacko’s Pull-A-Part + Scrap Metal._ Below that is another sign. _BEWARE OF DOGS._

And another, this one seemingly hand-written on a piece of scrap metal: _TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT._

“This can’t be right.”

“I put in the directions exactly like you said,” Ben says, an edge of defensiveness rising unbidden.

Leia lets it go.

“Hmm.” On the other side of the gate, the dirt road continues through a maze of broken down cars and rusting appliances. She nudges the car through, taking it at a crawl until they reach a wide patch of dirt in front of a trailer. There’s a brown 70’s Chevy- more rust than paint- that looks like its seen recent use parked nearby. A scruffy-looking German Shephard is panting in the shade cast by its shadow.

Ben gets out as soon as they’re stopped, glad to stretch his legs. The dog picks its head up and watches him with vague interest, like it can’t decide if he’s worth the trouble of barking at.

The trailer itself was an old doublewide, propped up on cinderblocks, with a tipsy-looking wooden porch built onto the front. More car parts – rims and tires and shit he can’t recognize, he’s never been a car guy- are piled up on the porch, next to a stack of rotten lumber and some moldy plastic deck chairs. The only immediate sign of kids was a sun-bleached plastic wading pool half-full of water next to the porch, but shit that might be for the dog, which has apparently decided they weren’t a threat and gone back to sleep.

Was this where Rey and Ashley were living?

Leia shuts her door smartly and marches straight up to the front steps, which creak and whine under her sleight weight.

There’s a sudden flurry of furious barking, and Ben nearly shits himself when another dog comes lunging from across the porch at Leia, slavering and snapping, before catching short on a choke chain that’s tethered to one of the slats. He’s halfway up the stairs to grab Leia and push her behind him, some misguided little boy instinct to _protect mommy,_ kicking his ass into movement before he realizes it.

Leia, for her part, doesn’t so much as flinch.

When he was little she used to fly into war zones. When you’re used to bringing water to war-torn villages in the middle east and saving girls from sex slavery and shit in the middle of Africa, he guesses an underfed mutt on a chain isn’t that big a deal.

The dog is still going nuts, pulling on the chain and barking. He’s not sure what kind it is beyond one of those short, stocky ones people get when they want a ‘guard dog’ because they think it looks tough. A pit bull maybe, or a rottweiler. It’s short, dark fur is dusty, and strings of drool fly everywhere when it snaps and barks.

“TEEDO, NO!” a sharp, young voice yells from around the back of the trailer. “Bad dog! Shut up!”

A skinny kid in a stained t-shirt and shorts comes scampering around the side of the building. Her bare feet smack against the flattened dirt, legs pumping as she runs. She stops just out of reach of the choke chain and points to the back of the porch.

“Bad Teedo! No! Go lay down!”

The dog gives another few angry barks in their direction, dodging around the girl to glare at them.  
  
“Go lay down!” The girl sticks one hand on her hip.

Giving a huff and a last grumble at the intruders, the dog hunches and retreats to lay beside the woodpile. It lets out a disgruntled _boof_ as it circles and lays down.

“Sorry,” the girl says “That’s Teedo. He’s a _jerk_. But he won’t bite you. He just thinks he’s tough.”

There’s a moment of quiet terror when she finally turns to look at them, as recognition sinks in. “… _grandma_?” Rey’s eyes go wide.

“Is there a reason you’re not in school, young lady?” Leia says, unamused.

Rey’s shoulders hunch and Ben gets a bitter pang of familiarity, washing out the relief he felt when he saw her. He recognizes that gesture. She gets it from him.

“I didn’t hear a word of that,” Leia says when Rey mumbles something unintelligible, stepping down off the porch to scuff her bare feet on the dirt.

 _“…I missed the bus."_ Rey squeaks.

“You missed the bus for three weeks.” Leia says, deadpan.

The German Shepherd has wandered over to shove its face into Rey’s knees, begging for pets. “…Yes?” she says, hopeful.

Ben snorts. He can’t help it.

Leia pinches the bridge of her nose. “Where’s your mother?”

Rey shoves her fingers into the dog’s dusty fur. She shrugs. Mumbles a querulous noise. Her shoulders are creeping up around her ears, her focus suddenly intent on the german shepherd, which thumps its tail idly at her.  
  
“Well when was the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t know. She went on a vacation. I can tell her to call you when she gets back,” she offers.

The porch steps creak in protest as Leia steps down, coming to stand in the dirt beside Rey. Ben can hear the frustrated edge to her voice. “Rey, honey, who’s taking care of you right now?”

“Oscar.” Rey shrugs again, focused on the dog.

“Who the hell is Oscar?” Ben interjects, at nearly the same time as Leia. Jesus- last time he’d heard from Ashley she’d been living with some douche named _Randall_. What the fuck was going on?

“He’s mom’s _boyfriend_.” Rey wrinkles her nose. “This is his house.” She hunches her shoulders again, wanting the conversation to be over. “And this is Beebee-“ she says, abruptly changing the subject, giving the dog a pat. Its tongue lolls out, tail thumping happily. Dust rises in a cloud from its fur. “She’s such a good girl. Not like Teedo-“

“Rey-“ Leia interrupts. Exasperation is creeping into her tone. “Where’s Oscar? I need to talk to an adult before I scream.”

Rey shrugs again, a whine creeping into her voice. “I dunno, inside?”

“ _Hey_ ,” Ben frowns. “I’m an _adult.”_

Leia levels him with a deeply unimpressed look as she marches up the porch steps. She pounds on the door with her fist. It’s not a polite knock. More, ‘this is the police, come out with your hands up’, than ‘hello, I’m here to visit’.

It goes on for a while. Oscar is apparently in no hurry to come to the door, but Leia keeps up a steady barrage until a man’s voice inside shouts, _“Alright, alright, gimme a fucking minute!”_

Rey doesn’t turn around. She cards her fingers slowly through the thick fur around BeeBee’s shoulders, staring at the dog like it’s her last friend in the world.

Something twists painfully in Ben’s chest.

Glancing between Leia and Rey, he sidles over to the kid, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

Rey doesn’t look at him. “Hey.”

Behind him, he can hear the scream of rusted hinges as the door opens, and his mother’s sharp tones.

“ _Are you Oscar?”_  
  
“ _Yeah_ , _how can I help you?”_

Ben crouches down so that they’re closer to eye level. “Can I pet her?” he asks.

Rey shrugs and makes a noise that sounds like ‘I don’t care’. Ben reaches out slowly, letting the dog sniff his hand before he scratches behind her ear. He notices that Rey’s skinny fingers are tangled in the dog’s fur like she afraid someone is going to pry them apart. Up close, Rey smells like dirt and unwashed clothes. Her elbows and knees are covered in scratches.

Behind them, the hinges scream again and the door slams as Leia steps inside, leaving Ben and Rey alone.

Ben scrambles for something to say and lands on, “You’re right, she is a good dog.”

No response.

“Not like that other one. He seems like an asshole.”

A tiny snort that wasn’t quite a laugh. Her nose wrinkles when she snorts, just like his.

Ben swallows hard. But it had been a couple of years, at least, and he wasn’t- he didn’t-

“You, uh… You know who I am, right?”

“You’re my dad.”

“Okay. Right. I mean… good. I just wasn’t sure if you… remembered.”

“Mom has a picture.”

“Oh.”

“And you were at my birthday. When I was six.”

“Yeah, I remember that.” Ben says, a smile at war with the lump in his throat. “It was at the park. You had ice cream.”

“Why are you guys even here?” Rey mumbles, sullen.

“Leia- your grandma was worried about you…  She said you hadn’t been at school in weeks.” He swallows. “We were both worried about you.”

Rey doesn’t respond.

“I’m gonna go… see how she’s doing,” Ben mumbles, when the silence begin them begins to spiral out. “Are… are you okay out here? By yourself?”

Rey shrugs, emotionless.

Ben stands and turns to go inside. It feels like a retreat.

_Coward._

His boots are heavy on the porch steps and the dog- Teedo- raises its head to growl at him as he passes. Ben can hear yelling before he opens the door. Not his mother’s, which usually meant she was winning.

“-look lady, I don’t know what you want me to say-“ Oscar is shouting. The door is on a spring, and it slams shut behind Ben. Neither of them look up. “She’s got food, she’s got a roof over her head- what the hell do you want me to do? She’s _not my kid_!”  
  
“Well thank goodness for that-“ Leia explodes. She was holding a kid’s backpack, Ben notices, stuffed full of clothes.  
  
Oscar takes a step forward, reaching for the bag and missing, “Hey, who the fuck are you to come in here-“  
  
“ _Hey_ -“ Ben barks. Oscar falls silent. People usually do. “Everything alright?”

Oscar is an early middle-aged, balding hick. The kind who worked manual labor and was probably tough as shit ten years ago, but tv dinners and cheap beer have padded him out, made him slower and softer without doing a thing to his ego. Jesus, Ashley had shit taste in men. And he’s not above including himself in that statement.

“Fine,” Oscar says. He takes a deep breath, cooling down quick. Again, Ben tended to have that effect on guys. “Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but I can’t let you just take the kid. Fuck knows I don’t want her, but she’s Ashley’s kid, not mine. What am I supposed to say when she gets back and the kid’s gone?“

“I don’t know, maybe that you did what’s best for the child? Is that a novel thought for you?”

“Look, you want to fight about it, deal with Ashley- I’m done. You and baby daddy here need to get the hell off my property.”

Ben thinks of Rey, her hair a mess, smelling of dirty laundry.

_Fuck knows I don’t want her._

 “Okay, look, mom- let me handle this,” Ben says, putting his hands on her shoulders when he can see Leia squaring up all five feet of herself like she was going to hit him. She’d do it, too. He’d seen it. “Go get Rey in the car.”

“Hey- maybe you didn’t hear me-“

_Fuck knows I don’t want her._

Ben stops Oscar with a hand on his chest, as the door slams shut behind Leia. He works his jaw, trying to ease the tension that’s gathered there. He feels calm. Terrifyingly calm, with that knife’s edge clarity that only came at the far limits of his self-control.

“Look, I have had a really shitty day,” Ben says, calm and controlled, not looking at him. He pushes just a little, just enough to force the guy to take a step back. Calm. Controlled. Another step back, and Ben steps with him. “And honestly, the only- _only-_ reason I haven’t broken every bone in your body right now is because my mom and my kid are right outside that door.” Calm. Calm. Oscar’s back hits the counter. Ben doesn’t look at him. “So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re leaving. Right now. With Rey. And if Ashley has a problem with that, you can tell her to _deal with me_.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know how you _deal with her_ ,” Oscar says, thick with scorn. Ben’s eyes dart to his face. He can see himself there. How the other man must see him. It isn’t a flattering reflection.

He looks away.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ben mutters, straightening up.

He feels wrung-out and exhausted. It’s only 2 o'clock.  

When he steps outside, Rey is buckled into the backseat of Leia’s sedan. The car is already running, and Leia has turned it around to face the drive. She blows the horn. Ben’s steps are heavy on the old wood of the porch as he hurries down to the car.

He climbs in the passenger seat and shuts the door. Opens his mouth to say something to Rey. Maybe, ‘ready to go?’ What comes out instead is, “…what smells like dog?”

On cue Beebee lifts her head out of Rey’s lap, grinning a big doggy grin in the rearview mirror.

“… mom, you can’t steal the guy’s dog,” Ben groans.

“Well he’s not taking care of it, look how skinny that poor thing is.”

“ _Mom_.”

“Rey loves her.”

“It’s not your dog!”

“She can stay with me! The yard is fenced-”

“Okay, mom, just drive. Before he calls the fucking cops.”

In the backseat, Rey wraps an arm around Beebee. “It’s okay, girl,” she says into the dog’s thick black and tawny fur, while in the front seat the argument continued. “Everything is gonna be okay.”


End file.
